Stuart, Bernie and I are all at a loss as to why for nineteen months and over 6,000 miles, the Stage 1 ERST gearbox in my Mk3 Fiesta, built for me in April/May 2005, has been slow at shifting from gear to gear, be it up or down the gearbox, and in all gears.

I fitted a 220bhp 1800 Zetec Turbo to the car, completing in April 2005, and installed this gearbox from the beginning. CTS have had the gearbox for the last three weeks, and after an expensive strip/inspect/rebuild, have found the 'box to be in tip top condition. Here is a run-down of everything I have done, and everything related to the problem.

1. I am using an AP 4 paddle clutch. Bite point was very low, so I fitted a manual adjust clutch pedal and new cable, plus a brand new Ford clutch lever arm at the gearbox end. Even with the slack taken up (using the adjustor at the pedal end) in the clutch cable, i.e. no free play in the clutch pedal - giving FULL effective travel of the pedal, this problem persists.

2. I rebuilt the gear linkage using brand new, all-original OEM Ford parts (bar the stabiliser rod which is fine, but I will check the bush once more). So that is new gear lever, new upper housing, new lower housing, new springs, new plungers, new gear selector rod.

3. Oil used was fully synthetic Castrol 75W90 transmission fluid, as advised by CTS, though they later said that Castrol isn't ideal, but I was using the right grade.

4. The flywheel was skimmed before fitting it to the engine and fitting the clutch. Quite a bit was taken off (it's an EFi Fiesta flywheel, sourced from a friend's 2.1ZT, and had quite a bit of wear and tear on the friction face as a result of hard paddle clutch use, as was expected); but I say provided the gearbox input shaft still mates up to the crankshaft as usual (not affected by flywheel thickness), and that the release bearing still sits on the clutch cover fingers, the flywheel skimming shouldn't make a difference

5. The front face of the input shaft isn't damaged, so appears to be mating up to the crankshaft properly.


Any feedback from any of you? Has anyone else had a similar problem? I'm completely stumped, as are all at CTS, so if it doesn't cleanly and quickly select gears when I bolt it in over the weekend, I'll be back to square one with far less hair and cash than I had 16 months ago!!!